In 2021, the Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network continued its Quarterly Webinar Series to discuss important palliative care topics with distinguished speakers from around the region.
As a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many organisations have ceased face-to-face workshops and conferences. Hence, webinars have become a useful and indispensable tool for remote learning. With this in mind, we carried on to extend access to our members-only webinar sessions to anyone interested.
Four sessions were held across the year, covering a range of topics:
- 17 March: Practising Patient Centred Care in the Community by Dr Ednin Hamzah, Malaysia
- 19 May: Psychosocial Care by Professor Amy Chow, Hong Kong and Dr Gilbert Fan, Singapore
- 18 August: Sending the dying patient home to die in a Terminal Discharge – Indications, Process, Outcomes by Dr Chong Poh Heng, Singapore
- 17 November: Conversations that Value What Matters to Patients with Serious Illnesses- A Nursing Perspective by Dr Sayaka Takenouchi
Each session was attended by an average of 500-800 guests (both online and offline) of varying professions from more than 20 regions worldwide. It was encouraging to have so many passionate individuals join in, as well as participate in the live question and answer segment with the speakers.
We also reached out to several palliative care organisations in the Asia Pacific region to partner with us as host sites so they may broadcast the session to their staff. Some organisations even hosted additional programmes in conjunction with the webinar!
Overall, the participants had positive feedback across all four sessions and found the topics covered useful and applicable to their work.
“Palliative care is one of the clinical disciplines significantly affected in myriad ways by the ongoing pandemic. The global palliative care services, especially in countries with limited capacities, such as Sri Lanka, are overwhelmed by the COVID-19 patients. Further, caring for non-COVID-19 patients with palliative care needs has become challenging, given the scarcity of resources. Moreover, with the onset of the pandemic, health professionals have had to confront a range of new challenges. In these dire times, it was tremendously beneficial that the APHN had organized the webinar topics pre-emptively to discuss the challenges faced in common regionally and created a platform for like-minded professionals to share knowledge and experience about addressing these barriers. Even though the prevailing situation does not allow us to host webinars physically at our institution, the propaganda attracts numerous health professionals to participate in the webinars online. We look forward to many more informative webinars in 2022.”
Testimonial by Dr Chamath Fernando – Palliative Care Lead/ Coordinator, National Centre for Primary Care and Allergy Research, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka
We are very grateful to all our speakers for taking time out of their schedules to deliver these excellent presentations, as well as, all our participants that have joined in over the course of the year!
APHN will continue its Quarterly Webinar Series in 2022 with a new range of topics and speakers!
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Written by: Ms Trudy Giam (APHN Executive)